Anti-Racist Advocacy | Stats + Stories Episode 241

Since the summer of Black Lives Matter in 2020, institutions all over the U.S. have been exploring their pasts. In order to understand how they may have contributed to or helped perpetuate systemic racism. Universities, private businesses, and non-profits have all been working to try to understand what it means to be Anti-Racist. The American Statistical Association launched an Anti-Racism Task Force to explore this very thing, and that’s the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with guests Dr. Adrian Coles and Dr. David Marker. Dr. Coles is an Associate Director of Biostatistics at Bristol Myers Squibb. He is a collaborative researcher who specializes in the design and implementation of clinical trials and the interpretation of clinical trial data to facilitate the assessment of benefit/risk for promising pharmaceutical innovations. He is also a subject matter expert in diversity, equity, and inclusion and chairs the American Statistical Association’s Committee on Minorities in Statistics as well as the organization’s Antiracism Taskforce. Dr. Marker is a senior statistician who recently retired after 37+ years at Westat. He is continuing to consult on topics of personal interest. He has worked on studies in the fields of public health, environmental pollution, homelessness, voting rights, and many others. He recently served as co-chair of the American Statistical Association’s Anti-Racism Task Force. Dr. Marker is an internationally recognized consultant in total quality management, having advised the Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, South African, Dutch, and Danish Governments on improving the quality of their data collection activities. He has also appeared as an expert witness before Federal, state, and local governments and on voting rights and language-minority rights before Federal, State, and Provincial courts. Dr. Marker is a Fellow of the ASA and American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and an Elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He will receive a Founders Award from the ASA at this summer’s Joint Statistical Meetings.